Over dinner one evening, Madeleine’s father spoke of an incident at his clinic.
“My very first patient was Guillaume Gerard. You may remember him, Madeleine. He was your brother’s classmate.”
“Of course I remember him,” Madeleine said. “Was he ill?”
She did not tell him that she knew Guillaume well. He was a leader of the Maquis, a demolitions expert and a courageous saboteur who was often at her BRCA meetings. Such information could not be shared, not even with her own father, although he himself was allied to the Résistance and routinely treated her comrades.
“Not ill but badly burned. An accident with explosives. I was able to admit him to the burn unit at L’Hopitale Generale, explaining that his burns were the result of a kitchen fire. Fortunately, Madame Roget, the admitting clerk, asked no questions.”
“She wouldn’t,” Madeleine murmured.
She wondered if her father knew that Madame Roget was a member of the Résistance, although she deliberately wore the Vichy lapel pin of the Battle Ax of Gaul. Perhaps he knew, perhaps he didn’t. Deception, Madeleine thought wryly, was the watchword of their times.
“I then rushed back to the clinic where two Milice officers were waiting with a Vichy policeman who had been stabbed by a Résistant. The wound just missed the jugular. I sewed him up. Seventeen stitches. It was only nine thirty in the morning, and I had already treated both a comrade and an enemy,” he continued and laughed harshly.
“Papa, why must you treat collaborators? Vichy? Milice?” Madeleine asked angrily.
“I am a doctor. I treat anyone who needs my help,” Pierre Paul Levy replied calmly.
She blushed, ashamed of her question, ashamed of her anger.
Later that same evening, she glanced out of the kitchen window and noticed a Citroën parked just outside their building. Two men leaned against it and stared up at their apartment. She lowered the shade and dimmed the light.
“Maman, you must be careful,” she said.
“I am careful,” Jeanne replied. “I rely on Madame Leonie, our wonderful concierge who sees everything and hears everything. We know that the rue de la Dalbade swarms with informants and collaborators. But that is true of every street in Toulouse and probably of every street in every French city. And, of course, although we no longer call ourselves Levy, there are those in Toulouse who know that we are Jewish, and some who also know that I am the daughter of Alfred Dreyfus.”
“We worry, Simone and I,” Madeleine said.
“Everyone worries. We live in a world of worries,” Jeanne replied.
She did not tell Madeleine that she no longer shopped in her own neighborhood. The greengrocer asked too many questions; the butcher’s assistant, impoverished and elderly, recorded the comings and goings of residents in a barely concealed copy book. It was known that such scribbling earned her small sums and even the occasional bottle of vin ordinaire when she submitted it to the Gestapo.
Strangers lurked, now and again following Pierre Paul when he left for the clinic. Jeanne took circuitous routes when she visited Simone and repeatedly cautioned Anna Hofberg never to speak to strangers. A padlock was affixed to the storage closet that contained her precious inventory of winter clothing. “We are extremely careful,” she repeated.
“As we are,” Madeleine assured her.
Before leaving that evening, she held Anna close and reminded her to hurry home at the end of each school day.
* * *
Daffodils blossomed in April, pushing their way up through the dark, rain-soaked earth. Sunlight spangled the city streets and the pathways of the countryside. The comingled scents of jasmine and lilac filled the air. Golden forsythia grew in profusion along the banks of the Garonne. Madeleine, indifferent to the Vichy squad cars with their screaming sirens that sped past her, paused to watch the laden branches sway in the gentle breeze.
Housewives flung open their windows, washed their curtains, waxed their floors, beat their rugs so fiercely that dust motes danced through the sunlit air. War or no war, the homes of Toulouse would sparkle for Easter, for Passover.
A group of Jewish women gathered each day in the kitchen of the synagogue on rue Palapret to bake matzoth for Passover seders. Madeleine thought it amusing that this was the year that her self-proclaimed secular parents had decided to host the holiday dinner.
“It seems that Nazi hatred has inspired your parents with a love of their Judaism,” Serge said drily.
“Better late than never,” Simone retorted, flashing her husband a conspiratorial smile.
The sisters helped their mother prepare the food, following Lucie’s recipes for the Alsatian delicacies served at Dreyfus family seders in Mulhouse.
If you want to eat the seder foods of your childhood, come to Toulouse for the holiday, Madeleine wrote to Claude.
She gave the letter to a courier, but she knew that it was doubtful that Claude would receive it and even more doubtful that he would manage the journey to Toulouse. Résistance fighters, newly arrived from Nice, reported that the Germans had increased their surveillance of even minor roadways. Travel to the south would be extremely hazardous.
“But even the Nazis could not prevent anemones from blossoming so early in the meadows of the Riviera,” the same courier said. “Never before have they appeared so early in the season.”
“Perhaps they hurried to bloom because they were afraid the Germans might invade and trample them. Or perhaps because they are wise flowers and understood that it was important that they come to life in time for Passover so that they might decorate the seder table,” Simone commented without looking up from the identity card she was forging.
“I wonder if I’ll ever see an anemone again,” Madeleine said wistfully. She had always loved the velvet-petaled crimson flowers.
Serge smiled.
“Perhaps you should look on your bed,” he said.
“My bed?” she repeated and hurried into the alcove where Simone always had a cot made up for her. A small bouquet of anemones lay on the thin pillow, a note nestled amid the scarlet petals.
Pour toi, Madeleine, she read and her heart soared. Claude’s handwriting. Was it possible that he was actually here in Toulouse? She closed her eyes, pressed the fragrant bouquet to her breast, and turned to the doorway. Unseeing, she felt his presence. Unhearing, she imagined his voice. Moving blindly she glided across the floor and stepped into his outstretched arms.
“I have come for the foods of my childhood,” he said, holding her close, breathing each word into her ear so that not a single syllable was lost.
Walking hand in hand toward her parents’ home, he spoke more seriously and explained that it was a special assignment that had bought him to Toulouse.
“I am here because the current of the war has shifted and the priorities of the Résistance must also change,” he said gravely. “Especially for those of us who are involved in child rescue efforts.”
“And of course, especially for Jewish Résistants,” she added knowingly, and he nodded.
Like all Résistance leaders she had seen the latest intelligence reports. She knew that Hitler, frustrated by the German defeats in North Africa and Russia, was now focused obsessively on his war against the Jews. Infuriated that the Finnish and Bulgarian governments refused to deport their Jews to his network of death camps, he now threatened Switzerland, demanding that the Swiss close Alpine escape routes or risk his wrath.
“The good Swiss have decided that their fear of the Luftwaffe outweighs their greed for Jewish bribes, or perhaps the Germans have offered them more money than we can raise. We know only that they have made their mountain passes inaccessible to us. A group of Jewish children led by our éclaireurs was denied entry at the border just last week. Somehow they did make their way across, but we must now rely only on getting our youngsters to Spain through the Pyrenees. Even there, many
of our routes are no longer viable. Still, Toulouse is our gateway, and I have been sent to recruit new couriers and to find new pathways,” he said. “We already know of the Irati forest, but there are other possibilities. Our Spanish friends have topographical maps. Their goatherds know how to cross unmarked areas. I have a list of contacts, veterans of the Catalonia battlefield, who are prepared to help us.”
“It will be dangerous,” Madeleine protested. “Some of the Spanish couriers have already been exposed as double agents. An innkeeper in Pau whom we trusted was secretly working against us and revealing our operations to the Gestapo.”
“We know that. I will have enough time in Toulouse to vet the loyalty of every new passeur,” he assured her.
“How much time?” she asked.
“A week.”
She gasped. A week. Seven days. Seven nights. A gift of hours, an expanse of time they had not known since the onset of the war. For seven days she and Claude would be in the same city, walking down the same street, looking up at the same sky. Of course, they would both be working hard, but there would be scavenged moments of shared laughter and ease of touch, a precious togetherness to be sealed and stored in tender memory.
“Then you will be here for the seder,” she said, suffused with happiness.
“Of course. For the seder. For the food of my childhood, according to your promise.”
He laughed. Pulling her into a circlet of sunlight, he kissed her lightly on the lips.
* * *
The Dreyfus women, during that pre-Passover week, concentrated their energies on seder preparations. Jeanne traded cigarette and tobacco coupons for potatoes and onions. Madeleine bartered her mother’s embroidered lace collars for a basket of pears, and Simone daringly forged ration cards to be used for the clandestine purchase of kilos of sugar and flour, trays of eggs. Madeleine’s face was flushed as she stirred fruit into simmering syrup to prepare the famous Alsatian pear compote that Claude claimed he could taste in his dreams.
A grateful patient presented Pierre Paul with two chickens, and the nuns of Valence gave Lucie a duck.
“For your holiday,” the Mother Superior told her and Lucie wept, moved by the enduring goodness and courage of the Catholic sisters.
The comforting scents of the traditional foods of the festival of freedom wafted through the apartment. Soup boiled, poultry roasted, sweet fruit simmered as they stirred and chopped, grinding spices, mixing apples and nuts for charoset, cutting through bulbs of horseradish, grimacing as they sneaked tastes of the bitter root. Their faces, rosy from the steam rising from the stove, their eyes bright with the sheer pleasure of their efforts, they dared to feel the onset of joy.
Madeleine set the table. She spread Lucie’s elegant embroidered white linen cloth across the wobbly trestle tables in the Levys’ shabby salon. She found a small blue vase for the bouquet of crimson anemones that became their centerpiece. Vin ordinaire filled the glasses at each place setting. Anna Hofberg and Frederica arranged the seder plate, happily chanting the name and purpose of each symbolic food.
“Parsley for spring. Shank bone for remembrance. Maror for bitterness.”
“Surely we don’t need maror this year,” Pierre Paul murmured. “We have an ample abundance of bitterness.”
“Papa,” Simone said reprovingly. “No cynicism. This is meant to be a happy night.”
“And so it will be,” Madeleine assured her, glancing nervously at the door.
Guests were arriving. Members of the éclaireurs who were on Claude’s team drifted in, but although he had promised to be on time, he had not yet arrived. Madeleine willed herself to calm. She reminded herself that he had scheduled a late- afternoon meeting with Robert Boulloche, who had a receiver strong enough to receive transmissions from Poland. Jewish Résistance leaders understood that Nazi operations in Warsaw set the barometer for what might happen in France. It was important to monitor those distant events carefully.
There was no danger in Claude’s meeting, Madeleine assured herself. Robert Boulloche, the Résistance leader for the entire province, had excellent security. Perhaps the newscast had been delayed. Still, she was unnerved by Claude’s lateness. As he himself often reminded her, danger lurked everywhere in Toulouse.
Battling her anxiety, she went into her parents’ bedroom and peered at herself in her mother’s long mirror, smiling approvingly at her own reflection. Simone had trimmed her long, dark hair so that it fell in thick silken swathes about her shoulders. The spring sunlight that brushed her face as she cycled through the countryside had burnished her skin to a rose-gold glow. Glints of green danced in her hazel eyes, and her floral-patterned cotton dress clung to her body in soft folds.
“Madeleine, we are beginning the seder,” her father called, and she turned away from the mirror and went into the dining room. She slipped into the seat Simone had saved for her. The empty chair next to her own was reserved for Claude.
“Where is he?” Simone whispered.
Madeleine shook her head and willed herself to calm, although her palms were damp and biliousness soured her throat.
“He’ll be here soon,” she assured her sister although her own thoughts spiraled, fear alternating with hope.
He had to come. Why had he not come? He would come. He was safe. He could be in danger. No. Of course he was only delayed. Traffic. A punctured tire.
She sat quietly as Lucie Dreyfus lit the candles and recited the benediction over the flickering flames. She added her voice to their small chorus of gratitude as they intoned the traditional prayer of thanksgiving that they had reached this hour of celebration.
“Shechiyanu, v’higyanu, v’kimanu l’zman hazeh. We have been supported and sustained to reach this happy day.” Their voices rose in grateful unison.
Song filled the room. The four questions were asked, the children’s lyric sweetness pierced their hearts. The adults nodded sadly.
Yes, they agreed silently, this night was different from all other nights even as this year was different from all other years, and this war was different from any other war. The song of ancient explanation began, but Madeleine was silent, her gaze never leaving the door, willing it to open, willing Claude to enter.
“We were slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt,” they sang but their voices froze into silence. With force and suddenness, the door was flung open and Claude, his brow beaded with sweat, his eyes burning, his face pale, strode into the room.
“Warsaw,” he gasped and they stared at him in fear and bewilderment.
All gaiety vanished. Something had happened, they knew. Something terrible.
“The radio. Turn on the radio,” he thundered and stumbled toward the empty chair beside Madeleine.
Madeleine, her heart pounding, held a glass of wine to his lips, stroked his cheek, felt its burning heat as though his very flesh had been seared by misery.
Jeanne hurried into the kitchen to retrieve the hidden radio and placed it on the seder table. Serge connected it and raised the fragile antenna, turning the dial until he found the frequency that would tell them the truth. They heard the familiar voice of the Free French newscaster, broadcasting at an unscheduled hour, which in itself, they all knew, meant darkness and danger.
“Ici Londres. Les Française parlent aux Français. This is London. Frenchmen speaking to Frenchmen.”
Mute with fright, they waited for the code. Dot-dot-dot-dash—V for Victory, followed by dot-dot—H for Honor.
“Vive l’honneur—long live honor,” they murmured as the introductory notes of Beethoven’s Fifth sounded. Another code. They braced themselves as the newscaster spoke, his voice rising and falling in the cadences of grief.
“This is an emergency broadcast that will be repeated every hour on the hour. There has been a tragic turn of events. The Warsaw ghetto is surrounded by the Waffen-SS. German tanks are plowing through the streets, s
hooting methodically, the barrels of their guns aimed at every doorway, every window of the Jewish quarter, hospitals and schools alike. Houses and factories are burning. Sirens and screams, a chorus of terror, sound throughout the ghetto. The Nazis use their powerful weapons, machine guns and howitzers, on the ghetto fighters. They herd defenseless women and children into trucks.” The announcer paused, his voice breaking.
Lucie Dreyfus clasped her hands in prayer, but only a sob escaped her lips. Tears streaked Jeanne’s cheeks. Serge clenched his fists, and Simone held a finger to her trembling lips as the newscast continued.
“But the Jews of Warsaw are fighting back. Yes, the brave Jews of Warsaw are fighting back. They throw their handmade grenades at invading tanks. They pour buckets of boiling water onto patrolling soldiers. Molotov cocktails sail through the air. Yes, the ghetto fighters struggle avec courage, avec espoir, with courage and with hope.”
His voice was choked with sorrow. In London, the announcer for the Free French radio service, in contact with his Polish counterpart, wept for the Jewish fighters, the embattled Jewish martyrs of the Warsaw ghetto.
Claude clutched Madeleine’s hand and she, in turn, placed her arm protectively around Anna Hofberg’s quivering shoulders.
“I don’t want to hear any more,” Anna whispered.
But there was no more to be heard. The radio emitted a burst of static and was silent. Reception had ceased. It was possible that the Vichy police had honed in on their transmission signal and jammed the line. If the signal was traced to the Levy apartment, they would all be arrested. Swiftly, Pierre Paul unplugged the radio and thrust it back into its kitchen hiding place.
“Tonight Warsaw. Tomorrow Paris. Then Toulouse,” he muttered bitterly and returned to the table where the family sat blanketed in sadness until Lucie’s trembling, sweet voice broke through.
“We were slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt,” she sang, her voice growing stronger as she continued, “but we were delivered with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”
One by one, they added their voices to hers and chanted the ancient chronicle of the triumph of hope over despair, freedom over slavery. This was a night when their remembered history sustained them. They had, in generations past, escaped catastrophe. Hitler, like Pharaoh, would be defeated. On this seder night, the Jews of Warsaw were fighting back, resisting. The Jews of France would do no less. Résistance to evil was their credo, their pledge.
The Paris Children : A Novel (2020) Page 21